The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(96)

I took my design to a local sign shop early the next morning. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on the brink of change, that I had finally taken the first step in an adventure I had dreamed about for years without ever daring it. Aside from the plans I had for the restaurant, I had plans with Beatrice, which meant that I had to have an excruciatingly difficult conversation with Maryam. Every morning I woke up telling myself this was the day I would tell her, and every evening I came home and pushed it back another day. So that entire winter felt at once rife with danger and ripe with possibility, contradictory feelings that I hadn’t experienced with such intensity since I was a young man.

It took only four days for the sign to be made but another six weeks to get the permits approved. The installation was scheduled for April 28, and when the shop told me it would send a truck for the job, I said to come early in the morning, before the bowling arcade opened. But they didn’t listen, or maybe they were too busy that day. The truck didn’t make it to the restaurant until nearly eleven in the morning, and the crane blocked part of the parking lot. I had to move my car to the south side of Chemehuevi to make room for customers. It took an hour to remove the old sign and hoist the new one up, and while my energies were consumed with making sure that people could safely come in and out of the lot, and that the contractor followed my instructions, Baker’s son stood outside the bowling arcade, watching us.

After the truck left, I stepped back to admire my new sign. It had come out even better than I expected and, pleased with my work, I felt energized to take on another little project. The pendant lamps that hung over the leather booths dated back to 1959, when the diner had first opened, and although they were made of beautiful cream glass, they were so dim that they made the place look ghostly at night. I decided to upgrade the lightbulbs to 75 watts—bright enough to see the menu, but still intimate enough for a cozy meal. So that night, I told Marty to go home and that I would close up.

I locked the front doors and brought out the bulbs from the storage room. With only the pale light of the counter to see by, I went from table to table, changing the old lights with the new. Then I flipped the switch on, and the row of booths came into view. I stepped out into the parking lot, to see how the diner looked from outside. The whole place was so bright and inviting that I was half-tempted to leave the lights on all night. From the corner of my eye, I saw Baker’s son stepping out of the arcade. He paused next to his father’s Crown Vic and observed my restaurant for a minute, as if he had a stake in it, too. He used to be a lanky, shifty-eyed boy, but now that he was a man, his frame had filled out and he had a direct gaze. Almost too direct. Again, that feeling of being watched came over me.

Still, it was a good day’s work, and as I left the diner and locked the doors behind me, I was filled with hope about the future. I’m doing it, I thought, I’m finally doing it. Tonight, I would tell Maryam about Beatrice and me; I would delay it no longer. Jiggling my keys in my hand, I walked to my car.





Jeremy




I was walking down a hallway that had recently been sprayed with graffiti, blue and yellow scribblings whose shapes I couldn’t quite make out. A tall crate partly blocked my way and as I rounded it, three of them came upon me. I fired, killing one and injuring the other two. Then the doorbell rang. I pressed Pause, my rifle frozen in the center of the screen, and checked my score. Just four points behind Damien85, a Canadian gamer I’d been trying to beat for weeks. Taking out my wallet, I went to the front door, trying to remember whether the lamb masala was $14 or $16. But it wasn’t the delivery guy, it was Nora. My heart lurched.

I stuffed the money back into my wallet and stepped aside. She came in, a faint scent of perfume trailing behind her. No makeup on her face. That silver necklace around her neck. And in her hands, I noticed now, a brown shopping bag with my hiking shoes and hats and clothes poking out of it, all the little things I’d left at her cabin. So this was it, then. We’d arrived at the fork in the road, the place where love ends. For weeks, I’d braced myself for this moment, and yet it had come and found me unprepared. “You can just leave that right there,” I said, raising my chin toward the nearest corner.

But I wasn’t ready to return the dress that hung in my closet, the dress into which I’d buried my face until I could no longer detect her scent. I wanted to keep the enameled pillbox that held her vitamin supplements, and that still sat where she’d left it on the bathroom counter. I couldn’t give up her copy of The Fire Next Time on my bedside table, the margins filled with notes sometimes so long that they spilled out over the edges and onto the next page. Signs that she had been here. Signs that she’d shared her life with me for a little while. She put down the paper bag and took in the mess in my living room: a first-person shooter game on television, frozen at the moment when blood spattered the screen; the pile of clothes over the couch where I slept, or tried to sleep, most nights; the bottles of beer and whiskey; textbooks and notebooks tossed under the coffee table, gathering dust. Then she fixed her eyes on me. “How are you?” she asked.

“Never been better.”

I was trying to provoke her, but she ignored my sarcasm altogether. After a moment, she said, “I heard from Detective Coleman.”

So this was why she’d come. Just this, nothing else.

“I can’t believe A.J. killed my dad, then let his father take the fall for him.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And we would never have known if not for that traffic stop.”